The Kanye West Threat: Why Liberals Are So Freaked About Him

by John Hawkins | May 7, 2018 2:54 am

When Kanye West[1] put out a tweet praising Candace Owens a couple of weeks ago and followed it up by noting he supported Donald Trump, he immediately became the center of the media universe. Suddenly EVERYONE was talking about Kanye and liberals seemed both stunned and outraged that the same man who once said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” was now saying things like,

in school we need to learn how magic Johnson built his business not always about the past. Matter fact I’ve never even heard of a high school class that presents future ideas

we are programmed to always talk and fight race issues. We need to update our conversation.

I had one of the most unexpectedly positive conversations about politics today. No battle lines drawn, no polarization — just talked about possibility, optimism, and love. The Kanye Effect? – John Durant[2] (Retweet)

we’re being starved and anyone who starts asking unpopular questions gets demonized. Only free thinkers can change the world

I’ve got a new challenge for everyone today. Pick somebody that you had an argument with that you think you hate maybe even someone you haven’t spoken to in years and contact that person and tell them I love you.

I haven’t done enough research on conservatives to call myself or be called one. I’m just refusing to be enslaved by monolithic thought.

As you’ll notice, Kanye doesn’t exactly sound like Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levin here. If anything, he sounds like someone who likes a few conservative ideas and is just saying people should keep an open mind and not hate the other side.

Why does that freak liberals out to the point where you have endless articles and tweets, a rapper publicly calling for the Crips to murder Kanye,[3] and members of Congress, like Maxine Waters, stepping up to say:

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Kanye West is a very creative young man who has presented some of the most revolutionary material in the African-American community. … But we also think that sometimes Kanye West talks out of turn and perhaps sometimes he needs some assistance in helping him to formulate some of his thoughts. We don’t think that he actually means to do harm, but we’re not sure he really understands the impact of what he’s saying, at the time that he’s saying it and how that weighs on, particularly the African American community — and for young people in general. … And I think maybe he should think twice about politics, and maybe not have so much to say.

When I hear those comments, I think back to my grandfather. He was a hard worker who worked in a mill and took care of my grandmother. He was not in any way, shape, or form a liberal. He didn’t pay that much attention to politics, but he knew one thing: he did not vote for Republicans. In the South, this was called being a Yellow Dog Democrat and you could trace it all the way back to the Civil War. Democrats ran the South and the Confederacy while Republicans were hated for winning the Civil War, hated for carpetbagging, and hated for the way Southerners were treated during reconstruction. It had a racial component to it right after the Civil War, but by the time I was growing up in the South, it was mostly just a generational thing. Did it make a lot of sense that all these relatively conservative Democrats were still supporting a party that had been taken over by far left-wing liberals who looked down on them and no longer represented their values? No, but the thought process was, “My granddaddy hated Republicans, my daddy hated Republicans, my friends and family hate Republicans, so I hate Republicans.” That sort of thinking started dying out in the seventies, but it was a slow process that continues on in a much-reduced form, even today. For example, in 2016 Republicans took over the state House in Kentucky for the first time in 85 years[6].

Black Americans are modern-day Yellow Dog Democrats. They’ve been voting Democrat for decades and they have very little to show for it. The Democrats gave us the first black president and he did absolutely nothing for black Americans. For the most part, Democrats don’t even try to promise black Americans an improvement in their lives or situation anymore. All they offer are giveaways for people as long as they keep failing at life, while they try to convince black Americans that Republicans hate them. In other words, black Americans feel like they’re stuck in a lose/lose situation. Either they have to choose between someone who will do nothing to make their life or their children’s lives better, or a Republican who hates them.

There are a lot of black Americans who are closer to Republican than Democrat in the views they have and the way they live their lives — maybe not a majority, but let’s say 30-40 percent. But, the vast majority of black Americans who are against abortion, against gay marriage, want a gun in their home to protect themselves, want to run their own business and believe in taking care of themselves are voting DEMOCRAT. Why? Because “My granddaddy hated Republicans, my daddy hated Republicans, my friends and family hate Republicans, and so I hate Republicans.”

As a conservative Republican, I can sit here all day long and say, “I do not hate anyone because of his skin color.” I want as many Americans as possible to have good lives and succeed, whether they are black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever… it doesn’t make any difference. Those people are not going to listen to me because I am a white conservative Republican.

Kanye is different because he’s an incredibly famous, talented musician who has credibility with black Americans. Does that mean they’re going to follow him like the Pied Piper? Not at all. People regularly ignore celebrity opinions. But, if Kanye can say he likes Trump and that we should listen to other people respectfully and try to engage them in dialogue, it sends a signal: “Republicans are not our enemies; they’re just people with a different point of view. It’s okay to consider Republican ideas.”

When you’re a political party that has a large group of voters who stay with it because of cultural inertia even though you do almost nothing for them, that is DANGEROUS. If one man stands up, more men may stand up and if Democrats actually have to earn black votes instead of just getting them by default, they’re going to be in a lot of trouble.

All I can say is that I agree with Kanye when he says we need more focus on the future, not the past—that we need more unpopular questions being asked and we shouldn’t be afraid to consider each other’s ideas. When you’re right, you’re right and no matter how badly it scares liberals, Kanye is right about that.

Endnotes:

Kanye West: https://twitter.com/kanyewest

John Durant: https://twitter.com/johndurant/status/990783351479975937

rapper publicly calling for the Crips to murder Kanye,: https://pjmedia.com/trending/rapper-daz-dillinger-sics-the-crips-on-kanye-west-for-supporting-president-trump/